


Gasoline

by le_chat_vilain



Series: The Joker and the Thief [31]
Category: Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Grief, Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:32:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6033193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/le_chat_vilain/pseuds/le_chat_vilain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaire makes a late night visit to the cemetery and is approached by a mysterious stranger with an offer that’s going to be very hard to turn down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gasoline

**Author's Note:**

> [TW: depression, grief, self harm] Poor. Fucking. Blaire. We’ve got a time jump here, and by the end of this chapter, you should be able to guess where this is going to end up - or at least those of you familiar with the ins and outs of the DC universe will - because a certain someone is going to come into the picture and make Blaire an offer she can’t refuse.
> 
> Musical inspiration is Gasoline by Halsey.

I go home and proceed to throw myself into my work. Before I know it a decade has passed me by, seemingly in an instant.

I promised Jay I’d give these people hell, and I have well and truly delivered. The level of pants shitting fear in this city is nothing short of a masterpiece in terrorism. The police don’t even dare come near me anymore, neither do any of the so called ‘heroes’ of this dump, not even Batman. Not alone anyway. When he does work up the balls to try, he’s always got that Nightwing kid with him, and I kick their asses every fucking time. Men, they just never learn. I could kill them I suppose, but it’s so fun to watch them keep trying, and really, it gives me something to do.

I’ve seized control of the gangs. I’ve got all of the other criminals in line under my thumb, and not a single one of them would even entertain the thought of turning on me, not for a second.

Not after I made an example of Harvey by hijacking the Christmas tree lighting ceremony four years ago, and flaying him alive on prime time television. In retrospect, making ornaments from his kidneys, removing his intestines and using them in place of tinsel, and spiking his head over the star on top of the tree was probably a little gratuitous, but someone had to be made an example of, and I wanted to make sure I left no room for debate. He just happened to piss me off on the wrong day.

Cobblepot, the groveling, pathetic wretch, actually came to me to pledge his fealty like we were in Game of fucking Thrones or something. I suppose the way things are, it’s not far from that actually. As a result, I now control all of his businesses, and his network of snitches, so there’s not a single dealing that goes down in this city without my knowing about it. For the most part, I don’t give a shit what they do. I don’t even really care if I get my cut or not, but just to give the illusion that I do, I’ll show up from time to time and beat the shit out of a couple of young punks who show the audacity not to go through the proper channels before conducting their business; gotta keep them on their toes after all.

I go out every night and just walk the streets, reveling in the way they all run and hide as soon as they see me. I don’t even have to do anything anymore, I literally just walk. Every now and then I’ll toss a few grenades around, maybe kidnap a hooker, or blow up an ambulance or two, but truth be told it just all seems so mundane.

Ten years on, and it’s still not the same without him.

Ten years on, I still go home every night, wrap his coat around me, crawl into bed, and cry myself to sleep. Every night I go home and a little piece of my soul dies, fading away just like his scent is from that worn old scrap of purple leather.

But it’s the only way I can still feel like I’ve got his arms around me.

At the end of the day, when I’ve washed the blood away, cleaned my weapons, and done the dishes, I collapse onto that bed that used to be ours, and I tear myself apart over, and over again. I still have days where I can’t leave this house. Days I spend in the shower, slicing at my arms obsessively because the only thing that soothes me on those days is that aching pain, and watching the blood drip into the water, marveling in the beautiful patterns and swirls it makes. That and the hope that maybe Jeremiah fucked up, and that the serum we’re on has an expiry date too.

When all’s said and done, underneath it all, underneath the gangster, the killer, the monster, underneath the weight of this crown I’ve earned through blood and chaos, I’m still just a scared little girl with a catastrophically broken heart. I’m still alone in the world and agonizing over that one big question: why?

Batman once asked me why I did all of this, what my end game was. I didn’t have an answer for him. After considering it for a few weeks, I realized I do it because I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to deal with the crippling pain that I feel every second of every fucking day, so I just distract myself with things that entertain me, be it drink, drugs, murder, stealing, sex, torture, or just setting things to burn; anything to take the edge off. I push it all out onto others in the hope that one day I won’t feel so isolated. I do it so that they hurt just like I do.

Every day my humanity slips further away, my sanity, if you could ever call it that, slips further away. I’m either on autopilot, or I’m a sniveling, bloody, wreck on the floor of my bathroom, wallowing in the decrepit remains of a life I’ll never get back. And the worst part of it all is that there’s no end date to this. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel for me. This is eternity. This is my hell, and I’ll have to live it until the end of time itself.

I’m stuck in this sick nightmare and there’s no waking up.

It’s been ten years to the day since he left me, and it’s another cold, wet night when I make my way to the old crypt. I do this every year, just once a year. Why? Because I fucking hate myself. It destroys me year after year and I do it anyway, because still, after all this time, I feel like I deserve it. I still feel responsible. I always think about opening the door, but I never do, and this year is no exception; I’m just not ready and maybe I never will be. I know he looks exactly the same as he did in there. I know he’s still in there looking like he’s just sleeping. Freeze made sure that’s how it would be. One day I might get the balls to look, but that day isn’t today.

I’m leaving the crypt when he speaks. A voice in the shadows, smooth and seductive, and of course, British.

“You know, my dear, it will never get any better while you keep on this path,” he opens with. I turn to face him and he steps out from the darkness. He wears a slim cut black suit under his ankle length, hooded leather cloak. Who does this fucker think he is creeping up on people in cemeteries at night? Lord Voldemort? There’s a heavy gold chain with a deep purple jewel on it around his neck, and a cane in his hand, with more rings on his fingers than there are in your average Tiffany’s.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” I ask him, both caution and annoyance in my inflection.

“I want to offer you an opportunity, Miss Hawkins,” he says. “And as for who I am, I go by many names, most of them of no consequence. I am the Demon’s Head, but perhaps you know me by my other, more commonly used name…”

“Ra’s Al Ghul.” Leader of the League of Assassins. Great. What have I done to piss them off? On the plus side, maybe one of them will finally lop my fucking head off and finally push me off my immortal coil.

At that moment he pushes his hood back and I’m looking into his piercing eyes, deep set into his angular yet handsome face. There’s an old world quality to him, and there should be – the guy has to be at least five hundred years old even though he barely looks a day over forty-seven.

“So you are familiar then, good.”

“If you’re here to kill me, get it over with, and I hope you got something that can take my head off in your magic pedophile coat there, cause that’s the only way you’ll succeed,” I tell him, opening my arms wide in offering.

“Oh no, Miss Hawkins, quite the contrary. You see, I’ve been watching you with interest for quite some time now. I have to admit, I’m impressed,” he remarks with a raise of his brows, and there’s actual sincerity there. “You’ve used chaos to create the most effective form of order I’ve seen in centuries. You have a talent, child. To say nothing of your proclivity for taking lives without question or, I presume, remorse.”

“Get to the point, I’m kinda having a bad day here, and I’m not really in the mood for chit chat.”

“For all your gifts, Blaire Hawkins, you lack one thing: purpose. Look at you, you reek of hopelessness. You don’t even know what you want anymore, do you?” he asks me with an air of arrogance that makes me want to punch him in the throat. Mostly because he’s right.

“And I suppose you think you can give that to me? If I come into the fold, bend the knee to you, play along and do as I’m told like a good girl? You clearly haven’t been watching closely enough, mate,” I sneer.

“You think you know everything, don’t you, you arrogant little shit? Never, in my reign have I ever approached anyone with the offer I have for you, not a single person. Do not make me retract it before I even explain myself,” he growls at me in warning.

“So, if you don’t want me to be one of your little toy assassin soldiers, then what is it?”

“I want you to help me cleanse this miserable country of the cancerous wastes of oxygen holding it back from true prosperity. I want you to make it burn with me, as a partner, not a subordinate,” he elaborates. “Oh, and yes, I do expect you to be inducted and trained as a member of the league, as a formality only of course, you understand.”

“What’s in it for me? Purpose in life aside,” I inquire of him.

“Why, you get to be the one who starts the fire. Plunging the nation into chaos? You can’t tell me that’s not appealing.”

He’s right. I’ve done all that I can here and I’m getting bored. I really am in need of a new challenge. The training part will suck, but the skillset will be second to none. Then of course it comes back down to the one simple fact that I have nothing left that I care about to lose.

“Come on, child, you’re running on fumes here. I can see it, and it won’t be long before the rest of them cotton on to your fractured state too. Join me. Give them all a new, more devastating reason to fear you.”

He extends his hand and studies me, waiting for my response.

“You’ve got yourself a deal, Demon’s Head. Let’s make a Molotov.”

 

  
**II.** [4 NOTES](http://le-chat-vilain.tumblr.com/post/139415823090/the-joker-and-the-thief-chapter-31-gasoline)   



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